Portrait Positioned as Challenger in Gartner Magic Quadrant

Evaluation based on completeness of vision and ability to execute

Boston, MA - July 10, 2008 - Portrait Software, a provider of next-generation marketing solutions, has been positioned in the challengers quadrant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Data-Mining Applications.¹

Vendors were evaluated upon their ability to execute and completeness of vision. "We are delighted to be positioned in the challengers quadrant and we believe that this is a well-deserved placement for Portrait Software," said Mark Smith, executive vice president of Portrait Software. "Portrait has gained much traction in the market through its ability to deliver marketing automation systems that are tightly integrated with customer insight and analytics, enabling our customers to gain a competitive edge through deploying inbound and outbound marketing programs based on a strong customer-focused strategy."

According to the report, "Enterprises are capturing ever-increasing amounts of data, measured both in terms of the volume of records (more customers, more transactions) and the diversity of data (more aspects of the relationship, such as Web traffic, and more granularity of data, such as item rather than category tracking of customer purchases). This growth in data feeds enables a growth in demand for the ability to analyze the data and deploy the resulting analyses into business processes."

The report continues, "The unsuitability of "generic" data-mining workbenches to support emerging data-mining requirements is leading to the growth of data-mining applications. Applications designed to solve specific business problems allow faster time-to-value (by simplifying the technical deployment and user on-boarding) and lower support requirements than traditional approaches."

Innovation and ease-of-adoption set Portrait apart

Portrait offers innovative customer analytics that empower business users to implement analytically-driven campaigns.  Portrait's Uplift Optimizer, for example, provides marketers with the unique capability of targeting only those customers who are likely to respond positively to campaigns and focus their campaigns on the most profitable segments.  This also enables marketers to eliminate wasting marketing resource on those who will not respond to the specific message, or respond negatively.

From point-and-click customer targeting for a single campaign to more robust multi-channel customer analysis including real-time scoring and decisioning, Portrait powers marketers and relationship managers to seamlessly and rapidly deploy marketing programs from customer analysis to campaign implementation .  Portrait's integrated analytics and campaign management offerings enable well-orchestrated inbound and outbound customer-focused communications that allow organizations to target the right customers, reach them most effectively and then automate customer engagement.

¹ Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Customer Data-Mining Applications" by Gareth Herschel, July 1, 2008

About the Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted July 2008 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period.  It depicts Gartners analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the Leaders quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.